ATTACK OF THE GHOSTWRITERS
Nov. 30th, 2009 11:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogITEM: Rupert Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff calls on "literate people" to boycott books until publishers stop publishing ghostwritten memoirs.
Of course, there’s an obvious joke here (literate people don’t read Sarah Palin anyway, ha ha, etc). And he’s right that such books are a form of “agitprop”.
On the other hand, I don’t know that these kinds of books devalue the concept of books any more than, say, the Gossip Girl series or Dan Brown.
Besides, like it or not, there’s a market for these kinds of books, which is why publishers are happy to keep churning them out. And frankly, the book publishing business has worked that way for a long time – crap sells, and crap accounts for 90% of the market, which allows book publishers to serve the 10% of the market the demands literary quality (whatever that means).
Or maybe not. Those of you in the business may have a better idea of the economics. But for me, the fact that Sarah Palin has a book out doesn’t devalue any of the books I read now. Frankly, I’m more bothered by the fact that she has a book deal and I don’t. But that’s a different issue.
Gone rogue,
This is dF
If there are still good books, they are largely irrelevant to a form and business that is largely about the creation of the artefact – identifier, symbol, leave-behind, brand enhancer. Books are a sales tool. They're propaganda. And they're fake. A lie. So many are just simply not written by the people the publisher tells you they are written by. Somebody should sue.
Sarah Palin, for instance, did not write her book and, what's more, it is not meant to be read like you read a book. It's a preposterous image, someone actually sitting down and furrowing their brow over the Palin work. But this is hardly a point just about Palin. It's a model followed by almost every politician with ambitions or entertainer without something better to do.
Sarah Palin, for instance, did not write her book and, what's more, it is not meant to be read like you read a book. It's a preposterous image, someone actually sitting down and furrowing their brow over the Palin work. But this is hardly a point just about Palin. It's a model followed by almost every politician with ambitions or entertainer without something better to do.
Of course, there’s an obvious joke here (literate people don’t read Sarah Palin anyway, ha ha, etc). And he’s right that such books are a form of “agitprop”.
On the other hand, I don’t know that these kinds of books devalue the concept of books any more than, say, the Gossip Girl series or Dan Brown.
Besides, like it or not, there’s a market for these kinds of books, which is why publishers are happy to keep churning them out. And frankly, the book publishing business has worked that way for a long time – crap sells, and crap accounts for 90% of the market, which allows book publishers to serve the 10% of the market the demands literary quality (whatever that means).
Or maybe not. Those of you in the business may have a better idea of the economics. But for me, the fact that Sarah Palin has a book out doesn’t devalue any of the books I read now. Frankly, I’m more bothered by the fact that she has a book deal and I don’t. But that’s a different issue.
Gone rogue,
This is dF
